Bill Hand: Woman’s Club, clubhouse helped to improve Union Point

By Bill Hand, Sun Journal Staff

Published: Sunday, January 12, 2014 at 05:13 PM.

Roberta pointed out to me the other day that, as of this month, we’ll have been New Bernians for 19 years.

Nineteen years! There are days I find it hard to believe I’ve been alive that long. That’s just a huge chunk of time. Until you have those moments when you are fondly remembering something that, you’re pretty certain, happened just a year or so… and then you look it up… and you realize it was 20 years ago.

And you say to yourself, “I find it hard to believe I’ve been alive that long!”

Well, anyway, my handy “New Bern” timeline tells me that we are on an anniversary here in town: It was 91 years ago, on Jan. 12, 1923, that the city of New Bern bought Union Point Park from the E.H. & J.A. Meadows Company for $22,500.

That venerable old park has been a lot of things. In the 1840s, for instance, it was a factory making sashes, blinds and doors. At one time it had seven fat vertical storage tanks, looking like “fat boy” MX missile silos, lined up alongside it.

I’m not sure what it was before 1923, and I’m not entirely certain why the city bought it. Judging from stuff I’ve read, I am guessing the city hoped to sell it off for some kind of corporation or industry, and for some reason that just didn’t come about.

Roberta pointed out to me the other day that, as of this month, we’ll have been New Bernians for 19 years.

Nineteen years! There are days I find it hard to believe I’ve been alive that long. That’s just a huge chunk of time. Until you have those moments when you are fondly remembering something that, you’re pretty certain, happened just a year or so… and then you look it up… and you realize it was 20 years ago.

And you say to yourself, “I find it hard to believe I’ve been alive that long!”

Well, anyway, my handy “New Bern” timeline tells me that we are on an anniversary here in town: It was 91 years ago, on Jan. 12, 1923, that the city of New Bern bought Union Point Park from the E.H. & J.A. Meadows Company for $22,500.

That venerable old park has been a lot of things. In the 1840s, for instance, it was a factory making sashes, blinds and doors. At one time it had seven fat vertical storage tanks, looking like “fat boy” MX missile silos, lined up alongside it.

I’m not sure what it was before 1923, and I’m not entirely certain why the city bought it. Judging from stuff I’ve read, I am guessing the city hoped to sell it off for some kind of corporation or industry, and for some reason that just didn’t come about.

And so, by default, it became a junkyard. As a Woman’s Home Companion Magazine article of 1934 suggested, by the fall of 1931 “Union Point had [become] a festering sore on the face of New Bern. Located at the exact junction of the two rivers on which New Bern lies the spot had lost all beauty as it degenerated into the city dumping grounds. Instead of trees, shrubs and waving rushes, it displayed an expanse of automobile bodies, bed springs, boilers, street sweepings, gas stoves, every sort of refuse from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms.”

I’ve had neighbors like that.

Heck, I’ve had bedrooms like that.

But the little Woman’s Club of New Bern, a beneficent society founded in 1903, became the catalyst that turned it into a park covered with flowers and trees and a big stone building that served as clubhouse, a USO center, and was used for a wide variety of venues. Without the Woman’s Club, there would probably be no Union Point Park today.

I can vaguely remember that seeing that building when we first came to New Bern… 19 years ago.

I didn’t know what it was and had no concept of its fine history. It was a shell of a thing in the mid-90s, and while I remember admiring its stonework, I also recall its poor condition.

The front porch had an immense crack running across — in a diagonal direction, if I recall. There was no glass in the windows and the door looked as if, were I to grab hold of it and start walking, it would come with me, leaving its hinges behind. The roof was a big brown lung ready to collapse.

Being new here, I was unaware of the battle raging around me by people trying to save it for posterity.

Today, if I’m thinking right, a pavilion stands where the Woman’s Club building stood. Like the original, it has no roof, only an illusion. I once believed the pavilion had a roof, for it looks like a roof. But I was caught shooting pictures at the park when a burst of rain came out of nowhere. I ran for that pavilion, believing it would keep me dry, only to stand at its center, rain deluging me, for the symbolic roof they put up there is only designed to hold out the sun.

It certainly held out any sunshine I was feeling at the moment.

I thought it might be interesting, over the next couple of weeks, to have a closer look at the Woman’s Club and their clubhouse’s rise and fall. It’s an interesting story that parallels what Swiss Bear hath wrought today.